A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Catharine of Valois
CATHARINE OF VALOIS,
Surnamed the Fair, was the youngest child of Charles the Sixth and Isabeau of Bavaria. She was born October 27th., 1401, at the Hotel de St. Paul, Paris, during her father's interval of insanity. She was entirely neglected by her mother, who joined with the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans, in pilfering the revenues of the household. On the recovery of Charles, Isabeau fled with the Duke of Orleans to Milan, followed by her children, who were pursued and brought back by the Duke of Burgundy. Catharine was educated at the convent at Poissy, where her sister Marie was consecrated, and was married to Henry the Fifth of England, June 3rd., 1420. Henry the Fifth had previously conquered nearly the whole of France, and received with his bride the promise of the regency of France, as the king was again insane, and on the death of Charles the Sixth, the sovereignty of that country, to the exclusion of Catharine's brother and three older sisters. Catharine was crowned in 1421, and her son, afterwards Henry the Sixth, was born at Windsor in the same year, during the absence of Henry the Fifth in France. The queen joined her husband at Paris in 1422, leaving her infant son in England, and was with him when he died, at the castle of Vincennes, in August, 1422.
Some years afterwards, Catharine married Owen Tudor, an officer of Welsh extraction, who was clerk of the queen's wardrobe. This marriage was kept concealed several years, and Catharine, who was a devoted mother, seems to have lived very happily with her husband. The guardians of her son, the young Henry the Sixth, at length suspected it, and exhibited such violent resentment, that Catharine either took refuge, during the summer of 1436, in the abbey of Bermondsey, or was sent there under some restraint. Her children (she had four by Owen Tudor,) were torn from her, which cruelty probably hastened the death of the poor queen. She was ill during the summer and autumn, and died January, 1437. The nuns, who piously attended her, declared she was a sincere penitent. She had disregarded the injunctions of her royal husband, Henry the Fifth, in choosing Windsor as the birth-place of the heir of England; and she had never believed the prediction, that "Henry of Windsor shall lose all that Henry of Monmouth had gained." But during her illness she became fearful of the result, and sorely repented her disobedience.